The Glue Holding America Together

As it fragments into various camps, the country is being held together by a common popular culture.

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

By a.d. 200, the Roman Republic was a distant memory. Few citizens of the global Roman Empire even knew of their illustrious ancestors like Scipio or Cicero. Millions no longer spoke Latin. Italian emperors were a rarity. There were no national elections. Continue reading “The Glue Holding America Together”

Weaponized Romanticism

by Craig Bernthal

Private Papers

At the beginning of the 20th century, T. E. Hulme, in his great essay “Romanticism v. Classicism” defined Romanticism as “spilt religion.” Continue reading “Weaponized Romanticism”

High-Tech Nothing

by Victor Davis Hanson

PJ Media

Faster or Smarter, Neither, Both?

I am not a Luddite who wants to destroy looms. The modern age has made life comfortable in ways unimaginable just twenty years ago. Continue reading “High-Tech Nothing”

What We Do Not Want to Hear Anymore

by Victor Davis Hanson

PJ Media

NO MAS, MR. PRESIDENT

The State of the Union could have been written [1] by a computer program. All the now familiar Obama furniture was in the room: the mock outrage at “them,” the psychodramatic first-person boasting (as in, “I will oppose..,” “I will not work with…,” “I will decline…,” “I will not stand by …,” I will not cede…,” “I will not walk away…,” “I will not back down…,” “I will not go back…”); the now customary rear-view-mirror jab at his fading predecessor; the monotonous promising that something is so bad that we must have a new program for it (each year the same threat, the same solution, the same failure); and the silence about the Obama legacy of stimulus, debt, and ObamaCare. Continue reading “What We Do Not Want to Hear Anymore”

So Why Read Anymore?

by Victor Davis Hanson

PJ Media

Is Reading Good Books Over?

There is great “truth and beauty” in Homer’s Iliad [1], but I would not try to make his sale on such platitudes. Continue reading “So Why Read Anymore?”

Mr. Obama’s 99%: Are We Poor or Just Unequal or Both or Neither?

by Victor Davis Hanson

PJ Media

The 2012 campaign is heating up and we can see the outlines of an impending us/them class war. But in our strange 21st-century world, lots of crazy things blur the president’s 1%/99% divide. Continue reading “Mr. Obama’s 99%: Are We Poor or Just Unequal or Both or Neither?”

America’s Two-Front War

by Victor Davis Hanson

PJ Media

America has the slows. Sometime about mid-2009 America began changing psychologically. True, to the naked eye, America retained the old hustle and bustle, but in an insidious fashion it began to think a bit differently. Continue reading “America’s Two-Front War”

Wall Street’s Disgruntles Utopians

by Bruce S. Thornton

FrontPage Magazine

The Occupy Wall Street protesters are looking more and more like the shock troops of the Democratic Party’s electoral tactic of class warfare. Responding to a question about the protesters, the President gave an oblique endorsement when he said, “The American people understand that not everybody has been following the rules; that Wall Street is an example of that.” Continue reading “Wall Street’s Disgruntles Utopians”

The False WWII Analogy

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

Since 2009, the example of the economic boom following World War II has been used by Keynesians to justify their record “peacetime” levels of borrowing intended to lift the US out of the doldrums. Continue reading “The False WWII Analogy”

Obama’s Paradoxes

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

Consider the myriad paradoxes of the Obama age. Unprecedented government borrowing is out of control, unsustainable, and finally causing financial markets to panic. Continue reading “Obama’s Paradoxes”